


Free to Fall

by PetrichorPerfume



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Heaven's Civil War, Inspired by Paradise Lost, M/M, Paradise Lost Quotes, fall from grace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-20 23:25:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2446919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s time you learned the truth, Castiel. Lucifer wasn’t the only one to Fall. We all Fell, in our own separate ways. You... You’re still free to fall, but Michael? Michael is so far Fallen that I fear there’s nothing left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Free to Fall

**Author's Note:**

> "Free to fall" is a quote from Book Three of John Milton's Paradise Lost.

_Free to fall._ Those words rung loud in the Heavens, piercing through the clouds, casting shadows upon every part of Paradise and spilling over the edge of the world, echoing long and low through Chaos, down to Hell itself.

 

 _Free to fall,_ their Father said, thundering and vociferous and unquestionably, irrevocably binding.

 

 _Free to fall,_ were the words that shattered Michael’s faith and sowed the seeds of doubt within him. The words were the first sliver of light in Michael’s eyes since Lucifer fell, the first truth since the Light Bringer was cast from Heaven.

 

Michael didn’t believe in free will. ‘He wouldn’t leave me,’ he wanted to say. ‘He _wouldn’t_ ,’ he wanted to shout towards the Heavens. ‘He promised.’

 

But he didn’t say anything, because free will is, and was, and always will be, an illusion, and Michael had a destiny of his own that he was helpless but to follow, just as Lucifer was predestined to be free to fall.


	2. Freer Still

When Castiel asks (and sometimes when he doesn’t, but he knows that the archangel needs to mourn somehow and it’ll never be his place to judge him for it), Michael always says, “We were happy.” Castiel always gets the feeling that ‘we’ doesn’t mean what Michael wants him to think it means, that it’s as close to a lie as any of them will dare to approach through either half-truth or omission, and that ‘happy’ is just another word for the things Michael saw in hindsight.

 

When Michael says, “We were happy,” Castiel knows that he really means that he and Lucifer were ‘happy,’ or as close as could be in the face of inevitable, unavoidable, _predestined_ war.

 

Raphael is silent on the matter, but Castiel knows that the way Raphael turns away, blue-green-red flaring across his wings, tells a story all by itself about faith tested and paradise lost.

 

At first – in the aftermath, when the dust was just settling and the hammer of fate still hadn’t landed – Gabriel had told him stories about great Heavenly adventures starring giants and monsters, he and Lucifer and Michael at the forefront of it, flaming swords blazing across the sky and cutting down evil to make way for new angels and for the Garden’s bounty.

 

But then Michael calls Gabriel away to tell him of the Plan, and Castiel doesn’t know what it is but he can see, plain as day and stark as night, on Gabriel’s drooping wings and shaking Grace, that it’s nothing good. That’s the day Gabriel pulls him down onto the fragrant grass and says, “It’s time you learned the truth, Castiel. Lucifer... Lucifer wasn’t the only one to Fall. We all Fell, in our own separate ways. You... You’re still free to fall, but Michael? Michael is so far Fallen that I fear there’s nothing left.”

 

Castiel doesn’t answer. He can’t.

 

And the next day, when Gabriel completes his separate Fall, Castiel stands at the edge of Heaven and vows to one day join him. 


End file.
